


Chasing lights through sleepless nights

by fengirl88



Series: Patterns of Light [15]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 08:18:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17199923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fengirl88/pseuds/fengirl88
Summary: The clock on the wall ticks loud and slow, so slow. Another half-hour before they’ll let him back in the room. It feels like an eternity.





	Chasing lights through sleepless nights

“We still need Xavier for the case,” MacTaggert says.

“That’s for Charles to decide,” Erik says. “You have Frost now.”

He takes another bite of the stale Danish. It tastes like cardboard. Everything in this fucking hospital canteen tastes like cardboard. Except the coffee, which tastes like dishwater. He’s drinking it anyway, out of sheer exhaustion. Can’t remember the last time he had a proper night’s sleep.

“God, this stuff is foul.” MacTaggert pushes the half-full mug of brownish liquid away, rests her elbows on the chipped melamine table. 

A fly buzzes towards the electric catcher. There’s a quick jolt and a flash of blue. Gone.

They don’t look at each other. He’s thinking about Shaw, the way that death looked. More like the chair than a lethal injection. Erik’s gut churns. It could have been him or Charles instead of Shaw. They’re lucky to be alive, he knows that. But Charles –

“How is he?” MacTaggert says, breaking in on his thoughts again.

Erik rounds on her. “He’s fucking paralyzed, how do you think he is?”

She holds his gaze, unflinching. There’s a long silence.

“What do the doctors say?” 

“Nothing,” Erik grits out. “They keep doing these fucking tests, and they won’t tell him anything.”

Her mouth twists. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” he says. His chest hurts.

There’s another long pause, before she says “The Bureau will pick up the tab.”

There’s a lot he could say to that, none of it good. He doesn’t say any of it. 

The clock on the wall ticks loud and slow, so slow. Another half-hour before they’ll let him back in the room. It feels like an eternity.

“Look,” he says at last, “I don’t know what he wants to do. About testifying, or whatever else. But whatever he wants, wherever he wants to go, I’m with him.”

He doesn’t say _If he wants me to be_. The thought that Charles might not want that is one he can’t let himself hold.

She clears her throat, as if what she’s about to say is a struggle. He half expects her to come out with something like _You hardly know him_ ; it’s what Theresa said, amongst other things. 

“Don’t throw your career away, Lehnsherr,” MacTaggert says instead. “You’ll regret it if you do.”

“Too late for that,” he says. “I crossed a line. We crossed a line.”

There’s no going back from that: the line he crossed, sleeping with Charles when he thought Charles was Shaw’s boy. The line he and MacTaggert crossed, sending Charles to Shaw in spite of his protests. Erik doesn’t know how else he’s going to live with himself, except by offering Charles everything.

He takes the strip of photographs from Rehoboth out of his pocket and looks at the two of them together, happy and carefree and in love. It seems a lifetime ago, but he carries it like a talisman, a promise of some kind of future.

***

Erik sits in the waiting room and stares at the wall.

Theresa’s words repeat in his head like a stuck record: _You hardly know him_. 

Erik could say the same about her, though they’ve known each other since they were kids. Back in March he’d headed by instinct for the place he and Edie used to stay, to find that Theresa’s parents were dead. To find her running the place, and with a nearly-teenage daughter, of all unexpected things. He’d been so wrapped up in being with Charles that he didn’t take the time to get to know her again.

_Charles Xavier could have got us killed. Erik, what were you thinking?_

Theresa wasn’t going to forgive Charles for that, no matter what Erik said. Or what Kitty said. If anything, Kitty’s defence of Charles just made things worse. 

It was touching, and a bit surprising, how devoted Kitty was to Charles. Not a crush, Erik’s sure of that, but something close to hero-worship. Hero-worship and gratitude. Kitty hasn’t said much about it, but it’s clear that Charles helped her come to terms with her mutation, in a way no one else could have done.

Charles Xavier is good with kids: who knew? And isn’t that a hell of a thing to find out now, when it looks like Frost and Shaw have put paid to any chance of Charles having kids of his own? Erik wouldn’t have figured Charles for the white picket fence type, but you never know.

_You hardly know him_.

He’d wanted the person he thought Charles was, and hated himself for it. Trying to reconcile that with what he knows now about Charles makes his head ache so hard it feels like it’s going to split. There’s still so much he doesn’t remember, though fragments of it keep coming back to him from those first days in Rehoboth.

If he and Charles are going to have a life together, he needs to know all of it. Needs to know all of Charles. Not just those flashes and glimpses that leave him baffled and desperate. Charles locked those memories away. Charles can unlock them again. Can’t he?

**Author's Note:**

> partly written for the amnesty challenge at fan_flashworks; prompt used was Sleepless.
> 
> title from the song [Close Enough For Love](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m34GdMrwz6o), sung by Shirley Horn
> 
> one or two more parts of this to go; thanks to everyone who's still reading.


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